Life, the city | The old Cartier Theater will be reborn

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It is a former cinema and theater of great historical value that Gabrielle Roy talks about in her novel Second-hand happiness. When it opened in 1929, its artistic director was none other than Rose Ouellette, the famous Poune.

Vacant for around ten years, the Cartier Theater will have a new owner, the Fabienne Colas Foundation, and it will once again be able to welcome the public on rue Notre-Dame Ouest, in the Saint-Henri district.

When Fabienne Colas made a first visit to the place with her real estate broker at the beginning of the year, she was pleasantly surprised. Before entering the door, she feared for the state of the premises, because she had the rather sad memory of a visit to another abandoned cinema, L’Empress, rue Sherbrooke in the Notre-Dame-de- Grace. “It was discouraging and even dangerous. The Empress was in ruins,” recalls the producer, actress and entrepreneur.

The Cartier Theater and the Empress are two old palace-style cinemas decorated by Emmanuel Briffa^⁠. The latter has embellished more than 150 cinemas in North America, including multiple in Montreal: the Rialto, the Outremont Theater, the Cinéma Château, the Granada Theater (now the Denise-Pelletier Theater), the Corona, etc. ^⁠1.

On the Héritage Montréal website, we learn that the Théâtre Cartier served as a warehouse before becoming a dance hall for teenagers and a nightclub.

For around 30 years it was leased by Dawson College for its performing arts program, but since 2010 it has been vacant.

In 2023, the Public Cinema – which temporarily occupies Casa Italia – had submitted a promise of a purchase offer which had been accepted by the former owner, but the inspection noted renovation costs that were too high for the organization non-profit.

The future Colas Theater

For her part, Fabienne Colas hopes that the Theatre, which will bear her family name, will be able to open in May 2027. She must go to the notary to conclude the purchase of the building (on sale – before negotiations – at the price of 2 .5 million dollars). However, she prefers to remain discreet about the cost of the major work to come.

These involve reducing the main room to 500 seats, creating another room and gallery upstairs, and a cabaret in the basement. In total, 1,200 people could use the multifunctional facilities at the same time. Fabienne Colas talks about film screenings, conferences, visual arts, festivals, shared work spaces… “I want places to live at all times,” she summarizes.

Kim Pham, of the NEUF firm, will be the main architect of the project. The building is classified as “of heritage interest”, so only the facade – in good condition – must be preserved.

“Currently, no location [destiné] “to cinema broadcasting does not exist in the South-West”, argues the Colas Foundation in its presentation document, whereas before the arrival of television, there were almost twenty of them, whether it was the Century Theater in Ville-Émard or the Vogue Theater in Pointe-Saint-Charles.

Réal Barnabé, co-founder of the Colas Foundation and vice-president of its board of directors, praises the strength of Fabienne Colas in making dreams come true, described as “unrealistic” by some. “Fabienne, you just need to open a door for a project to succeed,” says the former president of the Professional Federation of Journalists of Quebec.

The main interested party affirms that its project to acquire a room is a continuation of its actions.

The Fabienne Colas Foundation is behind Haïti en Folie and the Montreal International Black Film Festival, which has branches in Toronto and Halifax, among others, but also in El Salvador. “Every year, we have difficulty finding broadcast rooms,” underlines Réal Barnabé.

“Reconnect with history”

La Poune was the first woman in North America to have directed two theaters, the Cartier then the National. Fabienne Colas, for her part, praises the fact that she would be “the first black woman with an immigrant background” to acquire a major broadcasting room in Montreal. “It reflects the evolution of Montreal and its demographics,” she argues.

We can nevertheless recall that Oscar Peterson and Oliver Jones grew up in Saint-Henri while the neighboring district of Little Burgundy was a mecca in the history of jazz in Montreal, once nicknamed the “Harlem of the North”.

Fabienne Colas and her team hope that the Théâtre Colas will be able to present in the South-West an art-house and Quebecois cinema program similar to that offered at the Cinéma Beaubien, for example.

Representatives of the cinema industry already support his project for an independent distribution venue, including distributor Louis Dussault, of K-Films America.

Visit the project website

1. Read our series on old cinemas